The Origin of the Layout

The idea for Port na Cailliche came from my original layout Invercloy which was supposed to be a terminus at one end of a ficticious West Highland narrow gauge line. I enjoy reading about people's layout's when they've made a ficticious history to accompany them and use this to justify and describe certain aspects of the layout. The one that particularly springs to mind is the Craig & Mertonford Railway by P.D. Hancock where he created a ficticious history of the line for pertty much every aspect of it. Another that has also interested me to read about is Ted Polet's Craigcorrie & Dunalastair Railway, this has been a huge inspiration to me and has been very interesting to see develop over the time that i have been a member of the 009 Society.

These two layouts got me thinking about the origin for the railway that would operate through Invercloy. I can up with some ficticious names for Scottish towns and villages to have stations based in, and these were then used to form the company name (the Ardaig Bay Joint Railway Company). Two stations on this line have been modelled so far, Invercloy which was never finished, and still remains in that state, and Dunbracken which is currently under construction. Dunbracken is based on an ironing board and is a very basic layout.

Dunbracken was built as a learning exercise for Port na Cailliche, i always wanted to build a bigger layout, but at the time didn't think my modelling skill would be good enough to undertake such a task. Hence the building of a small layout as a learning exercise, and being the first layout that i've built entirely on my own i'm very pleased with it. There are several aspects which i had not tried or used before that i wanted to have experienced before i decided to use them on PnC, these included Rock castings, making water, DCC, building a ship and generally improving my ability with creating decent scenery. Not a small list, so i thought that a new layout was worthwhile, especially if it was small.

Back to the basis of the layout... The ABJR was formed from two separate companies, the Glencloy Light Railway Company, and the Ardaig Bay Railway Company. The GLR ran from Invercloy to Ramasaig, with a small branch to Dunbracken, while the ABR ran from Port na Cailliche to Ardaig where it connected with the Highland Railway. The ABR claimed the majority of the title of the new Joint Companie's monicker due to their higher level of fiscal solvency than the GLR. The locals often commented that if the two hadn't merged then they thought the GLR would have closed long before it did.

Both lines were separated by a small range of mountains in the centre of the headland which they both ran along either side of.

At some point in their history the two companies decided to merge and constructed a line through the glen of the mountain range to connect to each other. At one end of these glens sat Port na Cailliche, so this is actually a junction station, but the line up the glen joins some distance out of the station (so this may feature on a future extension).

Due to the two initial lines running along the coast they were blessed with fairly easy gradients, and therefore could afford the use of smaller sized locomotives, however with the construction of the line linking the two along the glens so more potent motive power was required. This was provided in the form of large tank engines and a small group of tender locos, and even a garratt for heavy mineral trains.

This operation effectively created two eras for these lines, one of independence, and one of operation as the joint line. During the time of the jont company stock still mainly operated over the lines it was originally used on, but occassionally it would be required to venture further afield on the rest of the system. The larger stock bought by the joint company could be operated over the whole system, though it seldom saw use on the Dunbracken branch due to the size of the terminus at Dunbracken.

Of course this is all fiction, but it gives reason for the ficticious town of Port na Cailliche to have a station like the one i'm proposing to build for this layout. I find knowing the sort of line you are portraying helps to decide things like the stock, how well maintained it should be (also dependent on the era you've modelled), how to operate it and many other things. I've found it quite enjoyable coming up with this little history for the line and will expand on it bit by bit, if you're interested in writing a history for your line then Ted Polet wrote an interesting article on doing so which appears in the Modeller Book of Narrow Gauge, and is well worth a read.

Port na Cailliche was chosen as the site for the larger layout as i thought it would be an ideal place to indulge my love of scenery, sited on the coast with a glen approaching the sea, rocky outcrops, a town and plenty of water. Plus being at one end of the joint line it would have seen all sorts of the stock operating so would allow me to build up a varied collection of locos and rolling stock.

Hopefully one day i'll have enough room to add the extension with the junction on it, but i've got enough work now finishing Dunbracken and with the plans for the 4 boards of this!

A rainy holiday miles away from Scotland proves fruitful!

Might sound like a strange title for a blog post, but... i've just returned from visiting my mum (who lives on the edge of Dartmoor) for a week and a bit's holiday. Unfortunately it rained a lot so we couldn't go and do as much as we'd planned for the time we were there, but it had it's bonusses, my girlfriend read a book she's been wanting to for ages, and i finalised the trackplan for the layout, and looked through lots of my old railway books!!

Whilst I had intended originally to have the layout on a much sharper curve, from talking to other narrow gauge modellers about my ideas i've decided to smooth it out and have a much gentler curve for the trackwork. To accomodate this i've had to ease the shape of the layout away from an L shape to what might be likened to a banana shape. The idea is that the fiddle yard end of the layout sits some distance away from the barrier at an exhibition (while being close enough to see all the details!), and it then curves and comes to a stop at the station end much closer to the barrier.

I also went to Plymouth model railway exhibition, whilst there wasn't anything particularly inspiring there from a narrow gauge point of view, i bought a few bits and pieces which will be useful. As i said before i'm planning on building a new body on the Roco loco that i bought recently, this will be freelance, but a 2-6-2T which is very much inspired by the Ballymena & Larne compund locos built by Beyer Peacock (albeit with smaller wheels and outside frames). More details will follow on this in subsequent blog posts.

Finally, i visited a friend who has leant me two superb DVDs, those on Scenery techniques produced by Paul Scoles. They are superb and cover all sorts of scenic techniques in an easy to follow and well explained manner.

Source: www.paulscoles.com

Paul uses dirt for covering his scenic hard shell, and applies this dry to the slopes of the hard shell, lets it settle whilst gravity does it's work and then wets it and glues it in place. This provides as natural an 'earth' as possible in my mind, where the material has settled to the angle which it would in real life (ok, so grain sizes are slightly different which will have an impact, but it's sieved beforehand so it's nice and fine). Examples of Paul's scenery techniques are visible on the galleries of his Pelcian Bay Railway & Navigation Company.

This is something i might consider for PnC, but i'm not entirely sure as yet, it could potentially add a LOT of weight to the boards, but it does look very good...